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"It is easy to appreciate the devastation of a physical attack and what it can bring but we must not underestimate the potentially devastating consequences of an electronic attack."

These were the words of Home Secretary, John Reid, yesterday at a conference organised by the Royal United Services Institute and it echoed the “Facing the possibility of an electronic Pearl Harbor” speech given to the US Congress by Secretary of Defense John Hamre in 1997, who added: "There is going to be an electronic attack on this country some time in the future."

This particular alarmist theme has been enthusiastically peddled by several security companies, since the Twin-towers collapsed; the possibility of a "cyber-terrorist" attack on what is known as our "critical information infrastructure" and while the evidence for Al Qaeda or its supporters having the necessary technical skills to commit significant online disruption, is at best shaky, that hasn’t prevente…

For over three years now, I've been banging-on, with many like-minded others, such as the BMA, that the National Programme for IT, the Health Service computerisation project, is an expensive disaster, flawed in both planning and execution.

Now, a Parliamentary committee has concluded that "Millions of patients" are "unlikely" to see any "significant clinical benefits" from the National Health Service's £12.4 billion national computer system by the time all of the money has been spent in 2014, MPs warn.

The Commons public accounts committee found that pilot projects on the National Programme for IT were already two years late and there were fears that the project would cost £20 billion - more than three times the original contract cost.

Government has attempted to resist the obvious for ages but the reality is that Ministe…